Misery Depot

Misery Depot is a free mystery/science fiction comic published by Papyrus Comics, created by Hermés Piqué and Juan Romera, for mature audiences. Read it online or download it in pfd or cbr at www.miserydepot.com.

domingo 22 de febrero de 2009

Video of Misery Depot on Google Android

A brief video of Misery Depot on Google Android. On its fourth day of release the Android version of Misery Depot is nearing 5000 downloads. becoming one of the most popular comics available on the platform.

viernes 20 de febrero de 2009

Comic books arrive to Google Android!

Press release.

Independent publishers like PAPYRUS COMICS and its release MISERY DEPOT pave the way for a new and healthy distribution model for comic books: moving to mobile devices like Apple's iPhone or Google Android powered mobiles.

On February 18th, 2009, Papyrus Comics released its international hit Misery Depot for Google Android. In less than 36 hours, the comic was downloaded 3100 times, which is the number of monthly units that a comic must sell to be in Diamond's top 250 titles.

Misery Depot for Android is free and licensed under Creative Commons, and may well be the first Creative Commons comic for any mobile device. The license allows readers to copy, share and remix the comic, giving them control and involvement that traditional distribution has failed to offer, and that ultimately readers expect.

Misery Depot is no stranger to mobile phones. It was recently made available for Apple's iPhone and iTouch by its own fans, who embraced the Creative Commons license in which Papyrus Comics distributes its releases. "We were excited to learn iPhone and iPod Touch users could also read Misery Depot, but we felt that a direct port didn't seize the opportunities of the medium. We tried to fix that with our Android release.", says Hermes Pique, Misery Depot's writer and Papyrus Comics' Director.

Indeed, Misery Depot for Android is basically a new comic, adapted to seize the opportunities of the medium. Mobile comics are a new breed of sequential storytelling, where the reader has to focus his attention on a smaller area, and has control of the pacing. "The techniques are different. If the reader is more involved with each image, should we use less panels to tell the same story? The distribution is different as well. Should be release comics in brief installments so users can download them through 3G, or assume wifi is more popular? Everything is new and exciting, and we're more than happy to be there at the beginning."

Papyrus Comics expects to release an adapted iPhone version of Misery Depot in the near future. Their next comics, scheduled for the end of this quarter, will also be distributed through a variety of formats and devices, of which mobile phones are only a part. Their projects populate P2P networks, can be read online, can be downloaded in PDF, CBR and CBZ, and are available in half a dozen languages. What about traditional distribution, namely print? "8 hours of development and 25 dollars gave us 3000 readers in a day and a half. Is it really worth the effort for publishers like us to concentrate on a stalled model? Our goal is to maximize our audience, and while I would love to hold our comics in my hand, right now paper is not our priority.", concludes Pique.

About Misery DepotMisery Depot is a free mystery/science fiction comic written by Hermes Pique and drawn by Juan Romera, intended for mature audiences. Released on late 2008, the comic now garners more than 10000 readers worldwide, as it has been translated to Spanish, French, Portuguese and Catalan by its own fans. Misery Depot is available for download at http://www.miserydepot.com and the Android Market (search: misery depot).

About Papyrus ComicsPapyrus Comics is the first e-publisher of Creative Commons comic books. Its goal is to maximize the audience of comics by embracing digital distribution, and translating/adapting its projects into as many languages/formats as possible. Three new releases are scheduled to be released in various languages and formats at the end of the first quarter 2009. For more information or general inquires, email: contact@papyruscomics.com.

martes 27 de enero de 2009

Depósito de Miséria: Misery Depot now available in Portuguese

Misery Depot and its site are now availble in Portuguese, thanks to the translation of Guillermo Lechuga and Joao Veiga. Along with English, French, Spanish and Catalan, this is the fifth language in which this Creative Commons comic can be read. The Portuguese version is called Depósito de la Miséria.

viernes 23 de enero de 2009

Misery Depot on the spotlight @ Septagon Studios News Blog

Misery Depot gets reviewed on the first column of Septagon Studios News Blog's newest feature: E-Book Spotlight. The article, written by Dave Baxter, uses Misery Depot as an example a alternative distribution models. Some excerpts:

On the American major comic publishers attemps at digital comics:

The major companies’ provisional attempts at offering products and services online have all been, frankly, pathetic. Not just within the music and book industries, but comic publishers are off to a bafflingly slow start to boot. Marvel is offering 6-month old product available only on their security-protected non-customizable “reader” and DC’s Zuda is fundamentally an American Idol-type competition that results in a handful of ongoing webcomics, to be cancelled at a moment’s notice due to poor response, and which may or may not ever see print (depending again on response), and the comics’ rights are locked away with DC for years before the creators can look into the ever-evolving, spontaneously sprouting, ground-breaking avenues of exposure that should be the right of any creator to pursue in order to sell more books. Beyond this then: unless a Zuda-spotlighted comic is picked up by DC, any story appearing inside a Zuda competition will have a mere 8 pages of material posted. That is, in a word, and to repeat myself, but what the hell let’s add a second word to spice things up: absolutely pathetic.

On Misery Depot:

The story reads like Philip K. Dick writing for Alfred Hitchcock; it’s The Twilight Zone given a good kick of literary post-cyberpunk post-modernism (yeah, wrap your head around that). Being a book tailor-made for online reading, Piqué smartly keeps things visual. There was a study enacted a while back (which I’ll be covering in greater detail inside the upcoming, third Killing the Grizzly installment) which concluded that online readers naturally skim a page and do not “read” it exhaustively, as they would a printed page. Even a PDF document is considered a “content blob” and won’t be read like a book unless printed out. This means that, if chasing a purely online audience, who likely won’t, in numbers, print so costly a document as a full-color comic, the book itself must be legible to the “skimming” eyes of online readership. Misery Depot is a largely silent story, following the journey of the main lady protagonist, as she wanders and struggles to reach her daughter. Information is imported through images, labels, designs, and dialogue that are parsed out with a designer’s eye, placed at key moments that are effortless to read, even online.

On Juan Romera:

But this leaves the lion’s share of the work to artist Juan Romera. His figures and backgrounds have the dark and liquid look of a 2000 A.D. sci-fi thriller, reminiscent also of Charles Adlard (The Walking Dead). His work is expressive, while maintaining the sterile and inexplicably sinister qualities that MD requires. Romera masterfully presents the inhabitants and their plights, laying-out each page with an intuitive choreography that taxes the reader not at all. Romera colors Misery as well, and his grey and drab-green palate fits like a formaldehyde-stained glove.

Dave Baxter also writes the column Killing the Grizzly at Septagon Studios News Blog, in which he further explores the world of digital comics. A must-read for those interested in the medium.

martes 13 de enero de 2009

Misery Depot review @ Project Fanboy

This was one of those rare occasions, where I walked into a review cold, having absolutely no idea what I'd find. And, oh, what a find it was! I don't want to give away anything more to the plot than is in the publisher's blurb, as this is one of 100% plot driven stories you always search for.

Misery Depot is a wonderfully written and superbly drawn adventure into the darker side of family life. Not hacker mover dark, but the much more frightening and subtle darkness that seems more science possiblity than science fiction. This is one of those wonderful stories, in which, even when you see the end coming, the agonizing truth and finality of it STILL has that heart-wrenching impact that the authors intended. And worse, there's that part of you that that sympathises with both sides. The part of you that says "I can see why you would..." while another part of you worries "But what if someone were to do that to me..."

The story moves at an incredible pace and truly carries you along with it. The art is gorgeous, filled with mood and feeling. The colors are stark enough that you can almost feel the chill, both of the character's predominate lack of clothing, and that other chill, the one of sheer dread.

If you like realistic stories of the human psyche mixed with a dabbling of fully realizeable sci-fi, then I suggest you head over to www.miserydepot.com and check out Misery Depot.

miércoles 12 de noviembre de 2008

Misery Depot review @ Ain't it Cool News

Not one of the most uplifting reads, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. I really liked this book for various reasons. Mostly because the main character isn’t a buxom beauty, but an elderly woman trying to understand the world she has woken up in. I also love the way this mystery unfolds and slaps you in the face with a shocker of an ending. Writer Hermes Pique does a great job of setting up a mysterious circumstance and keeping mum about the reveal until the very end. At the same time, upon second reading, the story takes on a very different tone, which makes for an even more fulfilling reading experience. There’s an awful lot of elderly nudity for artist Juan Romera to draw, but the nudity is not gratuitous; it simply adds to the palpable feeling of dread that seeps into and around every inch of this book. This is a really intriguing debut--a one-shot that leaves quite a mark after the last page is turned.

lunes 20 de octubre de 2008

Flahback Universe gives Misery Depot its first shout out

Thanks to Jim Shelley of the FlashBack Universe, one of the first publishers -if not the first- to distribute its comics exclusively in cbr format, Misery Depot gets its first shout out of the blogosphere. Shelley's latest installment of Free Comics Monday features Misery Depot as an example of free comics available on the web.

The FlashBack Universe currently offers 9 free colorful super-hero comics designed for computer screens, such as Saturn Knight below. Download them here.

domingo 19 de octubre de 2008

Misery Depot: New Distribution Models for Independent Comics

Press release.

Independent comics like MISERY DEPOT borrow ideas from free distribution channels like P2P, and the open source movement in search for a wider, more involved audience.

Embracing the growing trend of digital distribution and free content, the mystery/science fiction comic MISERY DEPOT is now available online in its entirety, without charge and without ads. The comic makes use of innovative techniques to give their readers an immersive and participative experience, far different from what the traditional distribution channels offer.

MISERY DEPOT is distributed under a CREATIVE COMMONS license, allowing anyone with non-commercial purposes to reproduce and share the work. This allows MISERY DEPOT to be downloaded legally through P2P or TORRENT networks, a practice that the creators encourage by providing links and files in their own site. Two versions are offered: English and Spanish, with more soon to follow.

Drawn by JUAN ROMERA (THE FIGHTING STRANGER for ZUDA COMICS and ZOMBIE HIGHWAY: DIRECTIONLESS for DIGITAL WEBBING) and written by newcomer HERMES PIQUE, MISERY DEPOT can be read online while listening to music suggested by the authors, or downloaded in PDF and CBR or through a TORRENT client, formats commonly associated with illegal downloading.

MISERY DEPOT tells the story of an elderly mother, who awakes undressed inside a humid capsule amidst hundreds, the voice of her daughter echoing in her memory. Uncertain of the nature the place, the mother joins with a stranger who believes they are in a high-technology concentration camp, and hints that the daughter might still be alive somewhere inside.

Borrowing ideas from the OPEN SOURCE movement, PIQUE and ROMERA not only provide their comic for free, but also give insight to the whole creative process by including the original script and each stage of every page (pencils, inks, colors and finally lettering) of the comic book. The creation of a mother's desperate search for her daughter is fully documented, even including annotations reminiscent of DVD commentary tracks.

The success of MISERY DEPOT will be measured in downloads, subscriptions and links, not sales. ROMERA and PIQUE are already working on new projects to be distributed in a similar fashion, improving the experience based on what they learn from MISERY DEPOT. It is unclear what tools and formats will resonate more with their readers. One thing is for certain: there are plenty to choose.